This invention relates generally to an accelerometer and more particularly to a method of fabricating an accelerometer that reduces bowing of wafer bodies and facilitates the creation of a low-pressure environment within the accelerometer.
Accelerometers are used to detect and record environmental data. In particular, accelerometers are often used in seismic applications to gather seismic data. Existing accelerometers suffer from a number of limitations. These limitations include bowing of cap wafers due to thermal induced stress and an inability to achieve a large dynamic range due to the effects of Brownian noise, both of which adversely affect the quality of data acquired by these accelerometers. Many existing accelerometers fail to provide a large dynamic range, sub micro-G level sensitivity, high shock withstanding, and good cross-axis rejection in a cost-effective technology.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the limitations of the existing accelerometers.